Dedicated to all the lovely ladies and dashing gents of the silent film era.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Miss Jacqueline Logan

I posted this on my Facebook page, but since some of you are not on my Facebook page...I will state it here. (By the way, if you do want to add me on Facebook, please do! My name sadly isn't really Jessica Keaton, it is Jessica Wahl).

Since my last blog was about Margaret Livingston and how she tied into the whole Tom Ince scandal, I figured why not do the rest of the gals who were also on board The Oneida that fateful trip. So, we did Margaret, next is Jacqueline Logan.

Jacqueline Logan was GORGEOUS! She is one of those girls where her face looked modern enough to where she would fit in today on screen. I think the same thing of Olive Borden. Silent stars like Alla Nazimova, Theda Bara, Mae Murray, Olive Thomas, they had a classic beauty that was perfect for silent film and the 1910s and 20s. But Jacqueline and Olive Borden had a modern look to them that I think would have worked well had they been alive now. That is just one man's opinion though.

She is also 1/3 of one of my favorite pictures from the era. This one below with Ann Pennington and Billie Dove.

How amazing do they all look?! Three perfect examples of beautiful gals in the 1920s. Oh to have been a part of their little date that day. How fun!

Jacqueline Logan was born Jacqueline Medura Logan on November 30, 1901 in Corsicana, Texas. I don't know much about her early life, and I couldn't find her on any census records that I had at my disposal. What I do know is that her father was a renowned architect and her mother was an opera singer for sometime.

Apparently during her teens she took ill and relocated to Colorado Springs for a better climate. It was there she began working as a journalist before segueing into the theater. She traveled with the stage company to Chicago where she had to lie about her age in order to keep working. She even lied to her family about why she was going to Chicago. She told them it was to visit relatives. Eventually her real age was found out and she was let go from the company. She soon left for New York.

She again told her family she was going to New York for reasons other than her theatrical ambitions. She appeared on Broadway in 1920 in a production of Floradora, where she was spotted by none other than Florenz Ziegfeld who wanted her in his Follies. She had the one of being put in a few of his rooftop shows which were just spectacular to see. Jacqueline also became a model for famed Ziegfeld photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston. Love him!

Jacqueline was given the opportunity for a screen test by then unknown actor Ben Lyons. She appeared alongside Mabel Normand in the film Molly O in 1921, and then alongside child star Jane Peters (who grew up to become the beautiful and amazing Carole Lomabrd) in the film The Perfect Crime.

She was pretty lucky when it came to costars it seemed. She had the chance to work with both Barrymores, Lon Chaney, and William Powell. Yeah........way too lucky. This makes Jessica jealous.

Although she did appear in a number of talkies, she wasn't a big success. Her roles were most supporting or brief cameos. She decided to take a break from the screen (as a lot of stars did when talkies came) and go to England to work on the stage. It was while working in England that she found a new way to work in the movies. Writing and directing. She wrote two films that were quite successful in Europe, but when she tried to do the same thing on her return to Hollywood, she was turned away. The film studios were proud of her achievements they said, they just didn't feel comfortable with hiring a female director. Nice, huh?

She retired from films completely in 1934. She did do an interview for Kevin Brownlow's documentary Hollywood in the 1970s, but her interview appears to have been lost because it was never aired and isn't in any new releases of the series.

Jacqueline Logan passed away on April 4, 1983 in Melbourne, Florida.

She was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Decatur, Illinois.

Jacqueline was only married once, to an industrialist named Larry Winston. I am not 100% sure when they married, but I do know they divorced in 1947. I have also read that she was married to a man named Ralph Gillespie during the 1920s.

She was good friends with actresses Lila Lee, Dorothy Dalton, and Lina Basquette.

7 comments:

Loved youre post on Jacqueline. I want to add you to my facebook but could you tell me what photo you posted on youre page? I looked but there are other girls with youre same name and I want to make sure i get the right one.

Hi Jessica,Anyway with awesome bio you did on Miss Logan, I was able to find her on the 1900 Census. Her mother was pregnant with her at the time. Because there was no pregnant check box, the common practice was to marked the "Mother of how many children" box which is 1 for this case and leave the "Number of these children living" box empty. Her father was Charles A Logan ,a architect and her mother name's is Marion. Here is the link to 1900 Census: https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-267-11865-99259-25?cc=1325221Since I wanted to be extra sure, I used google books and here is the link to the snippet of the book(They had faces then:super stars, stars, and starlets of the 1930's):https://www.google.com/search?q=SILENT+IS+PLANTIUM&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=Jacqueline+Logan,charles+logan&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvnso&source=lnms&tbm=bks&ei=bbe-T-_wNKiz6gGVo-mdCg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=1&ved=0CFgQ_AUoAA&prmdo=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=258d15ac3dcb506&biw=1440&bih=771